Samedi, Still Life

I'm taking a four-day weekend. I have a lot of little errands to attend to and also just need some r&r. Yesterday, the first day of staycation, was lovely: deep cleaned the first floor of our apartment, ran errands on my bike in the sunshine, bought a sexy dress at Buffalo Exchange, ate Thai green papaya salad and Thai iced coffee on the warm bench outside the theatre, finished the night with a glass of Cabernet at our crappy, beloved mainstay bar, Tennessee Reds.

Today's been a little less productive, although I can now officially call myself Mrs. Walton, as the Social Security Administration and the DMV now have my married name on the books. My new photo is awful (don't get your picture taken early on a Saturday morning, at the local mall's express DMV, amidst the aggressions and sweaty bodies of strangers' families, wearing no makeup and your glasses).
I'm excited.

Since then I've spent the last couple of hours on the couch, reading the first genuinely difficult novel I've read in ages: A. S. Byatt's Still Life. It's a very cold novel, edging on literary and art criticism, but with interesting enough characters and ambiguous enough relationships to maintain my interest. I wouldn't say I like it, exactly, but I'm intrigued by it. Byatt is smart, economical and pretentious. Her characters aren't likable but they are full of the niggling doubts about marriage and love and intellectual satisfaction that most people share, and they are all deeply flawed. I find myself offended by Francesca's disinterest in her Provencal adventures, but also recognizing my fifteen year-old self, in Spain in 1996, in her cultural detachment and embarrassed homesickness. Likewise, Stephanie and Daniel's marriage seems so lonely to me, and yet marriage is ultimately a permanent union of two, and not, realistically, the Hallmark ideal of two making one. So the isolation each feels within their love...I think this is true.

But philosophizing about life by Byatt, while stimulating, is too melancholy on this grey and chilly day. It's time to rise from the couch and fold the laundry. Make some carrot cake cookies. Paint my toenails.

Ward off Monday, and enjoy the peace of a quiet afternoon with nothing of consequence to do.